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Monday, 6 January 2014

Maslow’s hierarchy of need or why, in winter, we always have hot chocolate..

I was just repacking and checking
through the safety bag that I take into the woods with me and I felt like
something was missing. There had been a lot more space in the bag over the
summer but as the weather changes so does the contents of my safety bag. So I added another bag, full of small gloves,
hats and scarves. There is a well known saying that there is no such thing as
bad weather, just the wrong clothes, but it is hard to really feel the full impact
of that saying until you see a child, he isn’t engaging with the woods around
him, but is stood, hunched, with his hands tucked under his armpits, watching
the others. “Would you like some
gloves?” He nods, chooses a pair and runs off to join in. True, it is another
thing for me to carry, but the difference it can make to a child’s ability to
join in is worth it. I hope most children come prepared to play and learn outdoors
but the reality is often they don’t. I think that part of my role as a Forest
School practitioner is to try and remove any barriers that stop someone from
being able to enter fully into learning, exploring and being in the woods.

Forest Schools are a place where
children can develop self confidence and self esteem and we aim for children to
be accessing deep level learning experiences, where they are immersed and in
the flow. But like that little
boy, people can’t access that powerful, playful learning state if their hands
are cold. The Hierarchy of Needs, as in
the theory put forward by Maslow, and extended in this diagram by the Australianchild psychologist Louise Portermakes it clear as to why.

Porter describes
how after survival and emotional safety, children look for belonging
(connectedness, empathy, acceptance) and autonomy (choice, mastery,
self-efficacy). Belonging is connected to fun, and autonomy to self-fulfilment.
But critically the survival needs; warmth, shelter, food and drink; are at the
root of all progress towards self actualisation. If we are concerned or
distracted by those needs, we cannot focus on our self-fulfilment or on having
fun.

Children, even quite small
children want to look after their own basic needs, they need to know what
resources are available, how to use them and have the confidence in you to want
to ask for them. The process of meeting
those basic needs can be a vehicle for having fun and feeling proud of your
achievements. If you have ever put a temporary shelter with a group of children
you soon learn there is lots of fun to be had, shaking the tarpaulin, rolling
and wrapping yourself up in it, winding the strings around trees, running
through a tunnel like half built shelter. Then, the fleeting moment of pride
and satisfaction when the shelter is up and we are ready to get stuck in to our
adventures.

For children to be given the language and opportunity to name their needs, and be given the resources to meet those needs is also very important. This little doodle that went into the recent Forest School Association newsletter explores this idea in reality;

I have noticed that the amount of
effort and the designs that children organically come up with for their
shelters reflects the weather and their needs. A group of three and four year
olds on a snowy morning made a shelter that wrapped them all up, cocoon like
inside, protected on all sides. No room for any adults in there though, apart
from just enough space to pass in mugs of hot chocolate. On the same afternoon,
when the sun had come out and the snow was melting a group of their classmates
made a shelter that was entirely different, much more open and spacious, no
need to huddle together for warmth any more.

That is why as the weather turns
I am checking the supplies of hot chocolate, rinsing out the flask and packing
the little gloves into my Forest School safety bag.

*This post, written by Lily, was originally published on forestschools.com in Jan 2011 and is republished here with their kind permission.